Friday, August 04, 2006

Rape/Kill @ $1600!

For the US administration, it has always made a politico-economic sense to bomb nations, but ironically, it has never made sense to them when it comes to duly compensate them. Their rationality, emanating from geo-politics & neo-con economics, has reduced them to a gang of charlatans, thoroughly obsessed to seek a rent out of every bomb bombed under the guise of restoring peace. And this has had far reaching effects not only on the innocent victims of US war crimes, but also on their own soldiers (those yet not killed in the war).

To measure the magnitude of US administration’s rent seeking appetite, one just needs to view the compensation paid by them to civilians killed in Iraq; and the figures are crying. While the death benefit granted to the family of American soldiers killed in any combat zone is $500,000, the amount paid to innocent civilian war-victims are chicken feed in comparison. In Iraq, the Associated Press, after surveying Iraqi hospitals, contended that in one month of their survey period, the total Iraqi-confirmed civilian deaths were 3,420, which even to them was an extremely conservative estimate. Comparable figures of around 43,000 are reported by the alternate media; but even these figures were not enough to make a blip on the screen of the US administration, as the maximum compensation that has ever been assigned to any Iraqi has been a measly $11,000 (given to an eight month pregnant woman whose husband and three children were gunned down in Baghdad).